Douglas Rain, the Canadian actor best known as the voice of ship’s HAL 9000 computer in the Stanley Kubrick sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died aged 90. Rain died from natural causes in hospital in Ontario.
HAL was named after IBM (one letter shifted).
Despite HAL’s celebrated status, Rain was never cast in a feature film in a live acting role, however, he did agree to voice a HAL parody in the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, in which he played a computer overseeing a complicated cloning procedure.